The objective of the authors in writing this book is clearly stated in the preface to the first edition [1]: “Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language is intended to provide the applied researcher with the capacity to perform statistical analyses with SAS software without wading through pages of technical documentation. The researcher is provided with the necessary SAS statements to run programs for most of the commonly used statistics, explanations of the computer output, interpretations of the results, and examples of how to construct tables and write up results for reports and journal articles.” Why publish a second edition so soon after the first? This is justified by important changes in the SAS system since 1985 as well as the introduction of SAS/PC. The authors also provide some examples and correct a few errors.

The assessment of such a book depends on what is expected; in other words, the book should be judged in terms of your own experience. Let me try to sketch what it is and what it is not.

The book provides an introduction to SAS. Included in the introductory material is an explanation of what this computer system is, how programs are written, and how data sets are organized. However, for the experienced programmer this material is somewhat lengthy.

In order to use SAS, the reader must consult a relevant user manual, as this information is not provided by the authors. As an example of this limitation: the text seems to imply that SAS can be used interactively, but in order to do this, the user must use the RUN command. This command is not introduced in the text nor is it in the index.

Although this book is about SAS, do not expect too much on statistics. In fact, the statistical aspects are poorly handled. There are 9 pages on one-way ANOVA, 11 pages on 2-way ANOVA, and half a page on n-way ANOVA. At the end of this discussion, the authors state, “It clearly is difficult to perform factorial experiments with a large number of independent variables without expert assistance.” SAS is supposed to be user friendly, even for the naive user. Since the stated purpose of this book is to help the reader in preparing papers for publication, the problems encountered by the unassisted SAS user will affect the whole community.

Given these drawbacks, I find this book easy to use. I would not, however, recommend it as a textbook; it is more suitable for someone who wants to become familiar with SAS quickly. But the help of an experienced SAS user will definitely speed up this process.